


Uncomfortably Perched By the Barn

by babyturtle



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: Depression, Family Dynamics, Gen, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Potter Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-17
Updated: 2017-02-17
Packaged: 2018-09-25 05:00:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9803546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babyturtle/pseuds/babyturtle
Summary: James stops talking and all hell breaks loose.





	

**Author's Note:**

> borrows cursed child characterizations to a degree; throws out the plot. 
> 
> alternate summary: "People don’t often grow up; most people just get older. Few people got the chance to really grow up. James Potter the original, James Potter I, had spent most of his life simply getting older and not a lot of time growing up; but he got there in the end. He stopped getting older, at one point, and grew up.
> 
> James Potter the second, James Sirius Potter, spent a lot of time being grown up instead of growing up and as a result had never quite been able to reconcile his expectation of life with its reality."

 

_There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you._ \- Maya Angelou

 

* * *

  
The day sunk into James’s skin, sitting uncomfortable and irremovable, stuck, the afternoon sun burning and twitching inside his bones. James resisted a shiver at the windless day, wiping his sweaty palms on his pants. He flipped onto his back restlessly, searching for a more comfortable way to lie on his bed and do nothing. 

Once there, he let his eyes blink closed drearily for a second before they sprang open again, arms reaching up to scratch as his skin. As he closed his eyes again, he saw the sun ripping free and pulling the trees and bushes and houses with it and his eyes flew open again. He had jumped out of bed, looked around and sat back down, pulling a Muggle magazine -- you know the kind -- onto his lap when his Dad barged through his bedroom door. 

Hastily, and while scrambling to sit up, James tried to shove the magazine behind his back. “Dad!” The magazine slipped out of his hands and onto the floor, unfortunately drawing both Harry and James’ eye to it. 

“Er,” James began. 

“Boys will be ... and all that,” Harry trailed off, eyes not quite meeting James’s. 

“Er. Yes.” James nodded as energetically as he could on the sickly still day. He wanted to protest -- he wasn’t going to do anything ... dirty with it, he was just bored really -- but even stronger than his desire to convince his dad he wasn’t masturbating was his desire not to prolong that line of conversation.  

“Er.” Harry said. 

“What did you want, dad?” James prompted. 

“Right,” Harry shook his head. “I was looking for your brother Al, and rather thought I would find him here.”

James shook his head. 

Harry frowned. “Any idea -”

“Nope!” James interrupted immediately. 

“Are you --” Harry began. James flashed his dad a tight grin and a thumbs up. “Right,” Harry nodded decisively and walked to the door. “Go see if your mom needs help with dinner,” he called as he stepped out, awkwardly. Harry never quite managed that graceful ease of self-possession that everyone told James he got from his grandfather. But maybe they just meant privilege. 

James collapsed back onto the bed with a moan, refusing to even acknowledge the magazine. “Fuck,” he whispered to himself. Harry should have known better than to come into James’s room -- James hadn’t spoken to Albus in two and a half weeks, ever since James had his breakdown. 

 

...

 

“James!” His mother greeted him at the bottom of the stairs. “Pleasant surprise to see you in the kitchen. Want to help with dinner?”

James shrugged. “Not really. I mean, if you need my help, sure. You don’t need help, right?” he asked hopefully. 

His mother also shrugged. “Eh,” she said. “I wouldn’t say need. I’d always welcome a hand, though, James. When you’re ready.”

James left the room without acknowledging this, perhaps even to avoid acknowledging the kindness of his mother. He walked outside to the back steps and kicked a patch of dirt aimlessly. He sat.  

He didn’t know how long he had been sitting -- couldn’t have been more than a few minutes -- when his sister came to sit beside him, with a concerned look on her face. 

“What?” He asked, unable to keep the irritation from his voice. It was her face, he was sure. 

“You okay?” She asked. 

James grunted. Lily’s eyes flew open in alarm because, James assumed, his lack of verbal response. “Can’t I enjoy the weather for two minutes without being checked up on?” He asked. 

The alarm receded but didn’t entirely leave her eyes as Lily held up her hands in surrender. “Don’t be an ass,” she frowned, pointing out that “it’s your fault we’re all worried.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t ask you to be!” He snapped, impulsively. She didn’t respond, just got up and left. He wished that it was sunset or something equally dramatic but it was only just past noon and he already had lunch and there wasn’t much else to do. 

If someone asked him what it was like to be suicidal, James would tell them to ask Scorpius. No, he’d tell them to fuck off. But he imagined that it felt a little like dreading the tetchy unbearable stillness and nothingness of Sunday afternoons, only every day, every second was a Sunday afternoon. 

It wasn’t like that for Scorpius, James suspected. But he didn’t know. He didn’t have a goddamn clue. If someone asked James what it was like to be suicidal, James wouldn’t know what to say but he knows Scorpius would. Hell, Scorpius probably spent most of last year wishing someone would.  

But nobody does ask James because nobody liked to talk about James’s “breakdown” last year. Dad blamed himself, of course, because “that’s just what Harry Potter does,” according to his Aunt Hermione who had a list of statistics about mental illness, none of them helpful. 

James hated Sunday afternoons. And he felt it building, like it always did. The ... stuff. And he didn’t want to be a brat but he was (and so on and so forth). James snorted, disgusted with his self-pity and then spun around when he heard soft footsteps. 

Predictably, Albus’s always-grinning face was waiting for James when he spun around. James frowned and put his back to his brother. He held up two fingers. 

“You don’t have to be such a dick.”

“Dad was looking for you,” James spoke his first words to Albus that summer. 

“Yeah, well, he found me.”

“Good.”

They fell silent. Albus just stood at the door, waiting. 

“Not going to go silent on me again?” Albus tried to joke. James ignored him. He didn’t feel like talking. Especially to Albus. 

Albus sighed heavily. Like he was so mature. Like he was such an adult after he went and nearly ruined everything for everyone. “You have to stop blaming me sometime. It wasn’t my fault. And this silent game is immature and stupid.”

James didn’t move but his lips pressed into an ugly snarl choking back the vitriol and hate he wanted to scream at his younger brother. 

Albus slammed the door shut. 

James wondered, cruelly, what Harry would do to Albus if he ever learned the full story. The thought entertained him for only a minute before he couldn’t bear it anymore. He stood up and went inside. 

It was still just past noon. He wandered through the kitchen past his mom and upstairs and then walked back down. 

He ended up on the back stairs again, crouching in the shade on the peeling and forgotten stairs. The stairs were comforting. Bizarrely. Even before, he had liked the stairs. He settled in the stairs. Dad would be coming soon.  

Sure enough, within the hour, his dad came. “Has the great Harry Potter finally deemed me important enough to draw him away from Auror Business?” As soon as the words left his mouth, James felt bad, surprised by his own meanness. He loved his father. He wasn’t like Albus. He knew Harry loved him as best he could. James looked at the ground. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I’m just in a mood.”

Harry didn’t reply, just sat next to him, squeezing onto the small stairs. He put his arm around James. James tensed, then slowly, minutely, relaxed into his dad. They stayed like that for a while until, finally, Harry opened his mouth to speak. James braced himself. 

“You know,” Harry remarked thoughtfully, “this would have been much more satisfying in front of a sunset. You know, clear start and end time, proper lighting and mood. Yes,” he agreed decisively. “Much better in front of a sunset.”

James mouth opened in shock. And then, to his surprise, he started to laugh. 

 

... 

 

The week past like that, long days and long nights and careful conversations. It wasn’t  _ quite _ calm or normal but it was fine all the same. Fine in the sense where Harry spent every Sunday afternoon not watching the sunset with James. Fine in the sense that James apologized to Lily. And fine in the sense that James didn’t say another word to Albus the entire time. 

It was fine like this until their exam results came, on the fourth week of summer. 

James knew he wouldn’t get an owl with the results for the exams he never finished taking. It was another thing to see it. It was still another thing to see the reality hit his parents, bless them. 

“James,” Ginny began, hesitantly. “Should we talk? We should. We should. We need to. James,” Ginny continued thinking aloud, her voice strengthening, “we’re going to talk.”

Lily giggled. Ginny shot her a look that attempted to convey the inappropriateness of her reaction. Lily put a hand over her mouth, still smirking. James didn’t want to admit it but Albus looked guilty -- or sad. Regretful. Something. He was frowning, at the very least. 

James shrugged. 

“James Sirius Potter,” Ginny warned and this time it was James biting back a laugh. 

“Yes, mom?” He asked, innocently. 

“We’re going to have a talk after dinner. Say ‘yes mom, you’re so smart and wise and beautiful. Truly, I am blessed to have such perfection as my mother’.”

Lily rolled her eyes but James complied and repeated Ginny’s words verbatum-- to Albus’s apparent surprise. 

Dinner, after that, was a short affair during which no one was able to fully focus. At last and quickly, it was over. Lily and Albus exchanged looks and crept out of the dining room as soon as they could. Probably to get their extendable ears and eavesdrop, as you do when you’re a Weasley, but James didn’t really care. 

Or, at least, he had decided during diner that there was nothing he could do to stop it so he firmly resolved himself to not caring. 

“Er,” dad started. James didn’t know why. Mom was more eloquent. “Do you have a plan?”

James shook his head, shoulders tensing. Dad grabbed his arm. “James, we just want to help.” 

Something pressed against James’s throat. He wanted to explain, he wanted to go back in time, he wanted to stop feeling like he was an ant under a microscope, seconds away from being burned from the inside out or some sort of freak. He wanted to explain how he just wanted to float away, suspended in air, touching nothing, unconcious, forever. But something was pressing against James’s throat, just like it had during exams, and he found he couldn’t speak, even if he wanted to. 

Mom was more helpful. “You can re-do fifth year, if you want. Or just re-do your exams.”

“You could even take a year off,” Harry chimed in, “do some home schooling and then re-do your exams. Whatever you need, James.”

James was touched, against his will. It felt a little easier to breath. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”

Mom and dad exchanged a look. “To which option?”

James shrugged. “I ...” he started. His parents waited. “I didn’t make the Quidditch team.” He ignored their expressions of surprise. He should have told them sooner,  _ he knew _ . “So my NEWTS are probably pretty important.”

“So, you want to stay home a year?” Harry asked. 

James thought about it. “No,” he finally said. “It would be a big ... Thing. And I don’t want to be a year behind.”

“I can talk to the school. You can take them at the end of August?”

James nodded. 

“Should we get you a tutor? We might need special permission from the minister, go through all the right channels ...” Harry trailed off, muttering to himself. 

“I mean, you’ve done the written part, right?” Ginny asked. 

James rolled his eyes. “Yes, mom.” 

“Not the practical?”

“Not the practicals,” James agreed. “Because of the whole --”

“Not talking thing, right,” his dad finished, looking up. “I like this -- we can get this to work. We can work this. Er,” Harry always jumped into problems headfirst, “do you want to see a therapist?”

“What?” James squaked. “Dad, no! I’m fine!”

“Are you sure?” His dad peered closely at James, waiting. 

“Maybe you should. You know, just try it,” His mom agreed. “Your father and I saw one after the war. My idea.” James frowned. He hadn’t known that.  

“No,” he said firmly, and pushed off the wall and up the stairs. 

When he got to his room, Albus was waiting for him, biting his lip. James wanted to ignore him but there was a choking knot at the bottom of his stomach whenever he did that. “Look, don’t go quiet again or anything, but I’m visiting Scorpius tomorrow. Come if you want. I don’t care. Just thought I should let you know. It wasn’t -- I do feel  _ bad _ , James,” Albus looked pained, still unable to meet James’s eyes. 

James opened his mouth, closed it and mutely shook his head.  Albus nodded curtly and as soon as he was gone, James collapsed onto the floor like a marionette with it’s strings cut. 

Maybe his parents were right. 

 

...

Albus crept into James’s room early in the morning. James was staring blankly at the ceiling and didn’t acknowledge his brother. 

“James?” Albus asked quietly. 

James turned to face him, hands tensing. 

“I feel bad, you know,” Al begins, in a low voice. “I didn’t finish saying it last night and, and, you have to know -- I hate myself for -- for being so stupid. I have nightmares --” his voice broke “please, James, just talk to me.”

James turned away. 

Albus took a slow, deep breath in, trying to control his voice. “It’s hard being -- me. And being different. Because you all, you all want the same thing but I don’t and so it’s hard and I get defensive but oh, god, you have to know that I’m only trying to -- that I hate myself so much right now. And I’d give anything to go back and fix it.”

James didn’t move. 

“And,” Al continued in a much more stable and furious voice. “No matter what you like to think, James, it wasn’t all my fault. It wasn’t.” Albus took a breath and headed to the door, not expecting his brother to respond. 

“I know,” James replied in a soft voice. “It was my fault. At least you tried to help,” he finished bitterly. 

Albus stilled. He didn’t know what to say. “Yeah,” he finally agreed. “We fucked up. Come visit him with me tomorrow. He’s been asking about you. It’ll help,” he promised. 

“Yeah,” James agreed. “Alright.” 

And then Albus left so that his older brother wouldn’t have to cry in front of him. 

 

...

 

Scorpius blushed and adverted his eyes when he saw James walk through the door. “Hey. James. You’re ... here,” he told the floor, chewing the inside of his lip. “Al? You told him to --?”

Albus nodded. “Why, should I not have? He’s, I mean, you know.”

“You told him about -- ?” James scowled, unaware of how much he just sounded like Scorpius. 

Irritated, Albus snapped at James. “Why wouldn’t I?” He threw up his arms. Then paused. And thought about it. “Except, no. I didn’t. Huh.” Albus turned to Scorpius. “So, the long and short is that James had a break down during his practicals -- you know, right after you were carted off and almost died and shit,” Albus breezed past Scorpius’s near death with only his clouded eyes to betray how much he cared. “And James went and stopped talking. And moving. And responding.”

Scorpius didn’t know what to say. James snorted at the irony. “Albus,” he said. “Give us the room.”

“I know you’re my older brother and all and you’ve actually got loads to work out here, but I think there are at least seven or eight nicer ways you could’ve asked.” Albus held up his hands in surrender at James’s glare. “Just saying,” he added petulantly. “Fine, fine, I’m going.” He closed the door behind him. 

“James.” Scorpius said.

James looked down at Scorpius, concerned. “Are you okay?”

Scorpius nodded shallowly. “Sure,” he agreed. James looked skeptical. “How’s your summer been?” 

“Oh, you know, just great. Fam is a big fan of mental breakdowns. My mum wants me to go see a therapist.” James laughed aloud, just thinking about it. 

“Maybe you should,” Scorpius suggested. 

James looked at him in shock. “What?”

Scorpius shrugged. “I do, sort of. I see a counselor. Probably will forever.”

“What?” James repeated dumbfounded. “No. You just made some stupid mistakes. You aren’t -- you know. You don’t need a lifetime counselor.”

“Yeah, James. I do. I’m not ashamed.” He raised his head to look James in the eye. “Are you? Do you think it makes you any less of a man? Am I less of a man?”

James didn’t know what to say, so perhaps it was for the best that it was then that Albus chose to come bursting back in. “Sorry you lot. Couldn’t wait any longer. And the nurses kept giving me these evil judgy looks, you know the kind. Couldn’t take it. I tried but no dice my men, no dice.”

Scorpius smiled. “No problem, Al. We were just talking about you Potter idiots and how your family’s refusal to ask for help is going to prevent you from overcoming any trauma.”

Albus was already rolling his eyes. “Don’t be a turd, Scorp. You know I don’t need therapy, I just need a slap or two and a good stern talking to from you. James is always down to slap me around and, well, you’re the one seeing the counselor so it’s not like you’re going anywhere.”

“You guys are  _ so _ dumb,” Scorpius said, but he was laughing. 

Some of that knot in James loosened. Albus did good, making him come. 

 

...

  
James was in Gryffindor, like his dad. And on the Quidditch team -- like his dad, though he wasn’t very good. Or, at least, he was good enough to make the team but not to be any sort of star. He was stable, he supposed. You knew what you were getting with James Potter as your Chaser. He was dependable. 

James worked harder than just about anybody else at playing Quidditch and he managed to be okay. Rose as great. Albus was great, even if he played for the snakes. 

He just wasn’t very  _ great _ . Being good was fine and all, but being great? That was the key. Harry Potter was  _ great _ . James Potter? Good. 

People don’t often grow up; most people just get older. Few people got the chance. James Potter the original, James Potter I had spent most of his life simply getting older and not a lot of time growing up; but he got those bits right, the bits where he grew up. Those were the important bits. 

James Potter the second, James Sirius Potter, spent a lot of time being grown up instead of growing up and as a result had never quite been able to reconcile his expectation of life with its reality. 

 

...

 

James and Albus had always gotten along like a house a fire -- that is to say, destructive and often violently. It was worse when they didn’t get along (students will remember their fated fight back near the beginning of Albus’s first year that ended in the destruction of three and a half of the first year boats. 

To put it simply, Hagrid wasn’t the best person to ask to cast a quick  _ repairo!  _ but was the most likely person to suggest the six people that couldn’t fit into the boats just ride the Squid across. 

It was an arrival that immediately claimed its place in the legends. More to the point, Albus and James hadn’t talked for the next three months. 

They had always been like that, ever since Albus Severus was born, only sixteen months after James and Harry had worried about it for as long. 

Ginny, it must be said, never did. She just smiled at them and told them stories of the horrible things Fred and George had done to each other and the rest of the family. 

And when the two came home for Christmas, Ginny pulled them aside and told them the story of Percy the Ponce and Fred’s death. “You don’t have to like each other,” she ended the story, “but you have to respect each other.”

James was the first to apologize. “Sorry, Al. I was childish.”

“Me too. I forgive you and all that. Sorry,” both brother’s made up with a lingering sense of shame. 

Ginny knew something about growing up in a house with too many people and not enough attention. 

 

...

 

When James started his fifth year, three things he didn’t expect happened: he got a girlfriend, he got regulated to reserve Chaser and he caught his brother doing drugs. 

He found Al in some dark lonely corner, only Al was  _ with _ people for once and even cracking a smile. Hell, James could’ve sworn he heard him laugh. James smiled. His brother didn’t have too many friends, not real ones, not beyond Scorp. 

It was nice to see him being a human for once. He went over to say hi and as he got closer, his smile started to fade. “Al!” He barked. 

Al jumped slightly, looked up and rolled his eyes. “Don’t be such a bore, James. It’s just some puff. I got it from Teddy.” 

“Teddy doesn’t smoke puff,” was James’s automatic response. 

Al’s smug face said it all. “Grow up James.  _ Everyone _ does puff.” His new friends chuckled idiotically. James irrationally wanted to punch them all in the face. He refrained, for Al’s sake. 

And, like, violence not being the answer and all. 

“Fine.” James walked away hesitantly. He kept looking back but Al would just wave and gesture him away and so James left. He had Quidditch trials in twenty minutes anyway. 

 

...

 

“They weren’t really my friends,” Albus explained on the way to their third visit together to Scorpius. “I mean, you probably know that and all, but all those Slytherin’s that I hung out with last year weren’t ever my friends. The ones that wanted me for my drugs were no more real than the ones who wanted me for Harry Potter.” 

James felt bad. 

“You can say ‘I told you so’ now,” Al added. “I won’t mind.”

“I know.”

Al frowned. “Are you still mad?”

James scrunched his eyebrows together. “No?”

“Really?” Al turned to fully look at him and was then thrown into his arms by the Night Bus coming to a full and complete stop in front of the hospital. “Because there’s no way the James I know would let me live this down.”

“It’s not that. It’s -- the situation. It’s real, you know? Like, real and bad. It’s different. The rules, the standard,” James looked frustrated with himself and his inability to convey his feelings but before he could do anything else, Albus reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. 

“I understand,” Albus told him with a deep abiding sympathy and something in James settled for a moment.

And then they were off.  

**Author's Note:**

> please let me know what you think, might end up going somewhere with this, doing some sort of flashback fic to what actually happened between james, scorp and al during that year. So, I loved Scorpious's characterization in Cursed Child and basically liked nothing else about the cursed child and kind of thought I could play around with the dynamic of Scorp kind of having an unrequited thing for james who is struggling against mediocrity while albus, who would give his left arm to be anywhere as near as "Potterish" as he perceives james to be gets to sit and watch his best friend fall in love with that same potterishness that has always seemed unattainable to him and then I kind of asked myself, well, what happens when that holding pattern breaks and it all goes to shit? and then you have this, with many many scenes cut out and whatnot. It feels a bit finished to me, but let me know what you think. 
> 
> and, real talk, which summary is better?


End file.
